Read on, it's good for the brain.

Month: November 2018

I don’t bother to fix inside out shirts. I let them be what they are until I put them on again. It doesn’t matter to me that they sit in a drawer inside out. Hell, they might even like the view. Then. Boom! One random day they are picked up, flung about and turned outside themselves where they can see the world walk by. I think it’d be a nice life to be an inside out shirt. But now I need to know where the best place is for a shirt to think.

I find it freeing to not put
boundaries on how, or what, I write.
The few times I’ve placed a fence around my words,
in an attempt to control what might come out,
I felt sick.
I bounce around from old memories,
to the smell of mud within a short story,
to the reality of what the weather is. Just now I opened our second story window and removed the screen to feel the cool drops land on my hands from the dripping of the snow melt from the roof. The drops splashed, then ran in streaks until again continuing their fall to the ground. I cupped a small portion and pulled my hand back inside; small drops fell onto the carpet next to my feet. They sparkled as they fell. I could nearly see through them, for a brief and small moment, but that too is gone.

I understand how religion cuts
tell a boy to eat a crumb
he may not want to
Stomp his hand until he eats
Tell a teenage girl to Not
go out, slap her, point your
pathetic fat finger in her face.
Tell a man how to walk
like the rest of the sheep.
We listen to crumbs fall and care about where they land
more than we care about the voices that caress us at night. Put a hat on a man facing a jury he’s aligned with. Stitch his mouth. The hat has spoken and the willing jury stands in approval. A funny thing happens with truth. We haven’t found the end of it yet.
Fuck your crumbs and let’s listen to non-speech with a hat until the fucking hat starts talking while your crumbs fall out of your pockets looking for work. Isn’t this a nice thing. Isn’t this such a nice fucking thing. A man once rode a ride into death on a cross.
I do wonder what he thought about a crumb. I’d like to save that man.

Gram! Don’t look at my balls!
I was drunk.
Just a few minutes before,
my drunk self took me to my
old bedroom to put on my gift.
Which was a cold water wetsuit for kayaking.
Fuckers are stretchy and real tight.
Once I had that bastard on, including the headgear,
I pranced toward the bar, where everyone was,
with their drinks and their cheer.
Gram! Don’t look at my balls!
It was snowing outside.
I remember laying in the snow, feeling nothing,
It was fucking good. To lay and feel nothing.
Eventually I came back inside.
My family accepted my balls as myself.
And Big Al wanted to have another shot.
And we did.

I knew who it was, but didn’t answer. I studied his large, red, bulbous nose. It was crooked. I wondered how long it took to create a nose like that.

He slid another image over the metal table. The photograph was of a 1968 Mustang Fastback GT. I scanned the description. It had an S-Code 390, just like mine. “You know, I once rode in one of those. That was a long time ago and you probably don’t even know what it is. A Heavy beast. With more torque than you could handle.”

I felt the same dull sensation I always feel when a man talking to me tells me about what I know rather than asks. “Does the sun rise differently for you than me?” I replied. The man shook his head. “There’s no need of that. Really.” He then placed another clipping on top of the photo of the Mustang. “Do you know who this is?”

“Neil Armstrong.”

“Right. I remember watching him step onto the moon. I wasn’t sure if what I was seeing was real. I’m still not sure if it was. You can’t believe anything is real unless you can touch it and you certainly can’t believe what another man says is real unless you’re with him and can justify his accuracy.”

“Do you believe he was in space?”

“I do.”

The old man dug through more clippings and placed another on top of Neil. “Were you alive when this happened?”

“I was. We watched it on TV in our classroom. We all saw it blow up just after it lifted. Our teacher cried and shut the TV off. I remember it was an old TV and they wheeled it in on a metal cart.”

“It was a shame to me that she never got to walk on the moon. I think everyone was watching because of her. It’s funny to me how close we can be to having everything we want and then it can be taken away. Either by our own choice, or by another way.”

What he said made sense to me. Much like knowing when something bad is about to happen and for some reason you didn’t change direction and then the bad thing happens and you know it could have been avoided.

“This, everyone knows what this is. I’ve been there and I can tell you when I stood on the edge I realized just how small I was. That canyon wasn’t a simple thing for me to understand, it changed me. Much like being here changes a person. It can be for the better, or worse. I guess it’s up to the individual.”

The mixed accents came back, along with the setting down of food trays and the slow shuffling of feet.

“See,” the old man leaned in and lowered his voice, “The thing is to not think of it by thinking of other things.”

I’ll sleep if God wants me to.
If I don’t sleep I’ll lie here
listening to my wife breathing,
and think, or maybe write.
I like how this feels.
I don’t get mad anymore,
when I can’t sleep.
I enjoy the peace of the dark
and the way the covers feel.
If I do fall asleep,
that’s fine too.